Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Move against News Agency Said Inspiring Fear rather than Anger among Russians

Paul
Goble

Staunton, December 11 – Russians
have responded to President Vladimir Putin’s decision to abolish RIA Novosti in
a very different way than they have toward many of his other recent moves,
according to Tatyana Stanovaya. Instead of viewing the Kremlin’s leader’s
actions as pointing to the demise of his system, many now feel open fear
instead.

That is a first, the Paris-based
analyst of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies says. “Earlier all
attempts of the authorities to ‘tighten’” the screws were viewed as “the next
step toward a collapse. The stupider the authorities behaved, the sooner they
would fall.” But reactions to the shuttering of Novosti have been different (politcom.ru/16884.html).

Many Russians appear
to feel that this latest and quite unexpected move “puts the country on the
rails toward the Soviet Union” ad that it is “irreversible,” Stanovaya
says.As a result, people have “stopped
joking” about what many had viewed as Putin’s “caricature authoritarianism” and
now think what they are seeing is the real thing.

The main question is why did Putin take
this step now. Stanovaya suggests there are three answers. First, the “conservative
wave” which Putin has promoted and ridden since returning to the presidency now
needs more than “political correctness.” It requires much tighter control.The new media arrangements give the Kremlin
that possibility.

RIA-Novosti was in part a more open,
even liberal news agency, but its leaders understood the limits most of the
time and obeyed them, Stanovaya says.
Consequently, it would be a mistake to see it as a bastion of free media that
has now been destroyed.

Second,
she says, Putin’s moves against Novosti are part of “the attack of the Kremlin
on everything connected” with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, his aides and his
ideas. For Putin, talk about modernization is a thing of the past. Now, the
focus is on “war, the State Department, Russia’s enemies” and dividing up
Ukraine to combat “the virus of an ‘orange revolution.’”

And
third, Stanovaya says, the events in Ukraine have played an especially critical
role.The 2004 Orange Revolution had “the
deepest consequences for Russian domestic and foreign policy; “the current
Euromaidan will have no fewer consequences.” Liquidating Novosti, she
continues, is a sign that the Kremlin is reading to move in that direction.

Stanovaya
is clearly right overall, but there are two aspects implicit in her argument
that she does not highlight. On the one hand, Putin is acting out of fear even
as he is spreading it in the Russian population.His latest moves to give him a totally
controlled media outlet are intended to block any possibility of Maidan-like
developments in Russia.

And
on the other, and precisely because the Kremlin leader is doing this not
because he is confident but because he is anything but, the reaction of the
Russian people or at least its most active elements and that of the West are
going to be critical.If both treat what
Putin is doing as inevitable and irreversible, it may become so; if they don’t,
this latest action doesn’t need to be.

Because
of the Internet, many Russians will continue at least for the time being to be
able to get independent news and information even if Putin expands his
repressive course. And because they have a vested interest in a democratic
rather than dictatorial Russia, the Western powers have leverage against Putin
if they are prepared to useit.